(Image Source: Wikimedia Commons)  BY MADISON MACK ANCHOR BRICE SANDER Results from the largest study of potential World Trade Center related cancers to date were released on Tuesday and the results were fairly counterintuitive. WNBC reports. “Researchers …  compared cases of more than 55,000 people. One group consisted of 9/11 rescue workers, the other consisted of patients who were not involved in recovery efforts operations. Overall, cancer rates did not differ between the groups.” But the study, which tracked New York residents enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Registry from 2003-2008 did find an significantly increased rate of three types of cancer among recovery workers: prostate cancer, thyroid cancer, multiple myeloma. But the researchers themselves noted that recovery workers are screened for cancer at higher rates than the average person and it was still too early to draw any correlations. Dr. Thomas A. Farley : “Cancer could take up to 20 years to develop and so we’re going to have to continue to watch this over the long term to see whether those three increases continue and to see what happens with overall cancer rates” Dr. Alfred Neugut, an oncologist and professor of epidemiology at Columbia University, told The New York Times he wasn’t surprised by the results. “I think, given the time frame and the exposures … there wasn’t a high likelihood that there would be an elevated risk … Cancer is a very specific outcome, and in most exposures, you have to be exposed for an extended time before you get the cancer.” And there were a few caveats to the study, as CNN points out exposures were self reported two to three years after the fact... “...making them subject to recall error. Second, the cancer cases... might be underestimated ...  Lastly, the study’s authors lacked information on other risk factors, including family cancer history, occupational exposures before or after 9/11....” Back in June the federal government added cancer to the list of diseases covered by the $4.3 billion World Trade Center fund.